


In a Definite Place at a Definite Time

by Pepperdoken, VagabondDawn, wafflelate



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Infiltration, Internal Clan Politics, Mistaken Identity, Time Travel, Uchiha Clan-centric, Warring Clans Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2020-01-11 08:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18426930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pepperdoken/pseuds/Pepperdoken, https://archiveofourown.org/users/VagabondDawn/pseuds/VagabondDawn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate
Summary: In terms of Team Seven mission disasters, being stranded in the Warring Clans Era is… probably in the top five. Maybe even the top three. But still, even if it takes a while, Sasuke and Shikako will find their way home. In the meantime, they just have to keep their heads down and avoid the Uchiha–Senju conflict until it’s time to get back to where they belong. Not hard at all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Voldecourt for betaing!

“So,” Bat says, tilting her mask in a way that _means_ to be cheery but really isn’t. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” 

Hawk looks at her. She’s made the prearranged meeting at the prearranged location and prearranged time — and there are no signs of fighting and no indications that large destructive jutsu have been used nearby — so nothing has gone horribly wrong since they split apart to do reconnaissance that morning. 

Not that _reconnaissance_ is beyond their skills, and certainly not on civilian targets like the ones they were investigating, but to even get to this point their mission is already going to be ranked in the top ten Team Seven disasters. 

It might break the top five. Maybe the top three. 

“Good,” Hawk says, pretty sure he knows what both her good and bad news will be, but briefly hoping that maybe Bat has just uncovered a conspiracy to murder the Daimyō or something which will be much easier to solve than the piece of bad news that Hawk found. 

“We’re alive,” Bat says, bluntly. 

Hawk groans. “Yeah, that’s… pretty much the only good thing about this situation,” he agrees. He doesn’t go quite as far as saying _it could be worse_ because he’s not an idiot, but the situation isn’t _quite_ as dire as all that. They’re alive, unharmed, together, not being attacked… 

“Bad news,” Bat continues mercilessly. 

“I didn’t ask for that,” Hawk interrupts.  
  
“Bad news!” She says again, anyway. “We are… in the past.” 

“Yeah, I got that much,” Hawk agrees wearily. “On account of Konoha not being there.” 

They both pause thoughtfully on the cliff top and look down at the valley that should, in fact, house the village they call home. It’s distinctly lacking in a shinobi village. The trees where Konoha isn’t are pretty small for a Konoha forest — Hashirama clearly hasn’t got around to making the valley defensible yet — and the canopy is a rusty brown sea of fading autumn leaves that rustle like paper when the wind shakes them. 

“Probably even our past,” Bat offers after a moment. “Though, of course, there’s no way for me to be certain about that.” 

“Thanks, that was an option I didn’t know we had.” Hawk crosses his arms. “I hate it.” 

Bat nods, companionably, like getting lost in time and space is just kinda a thing that happens sometimes. She’s not exactly wrong, unfortunately, though this is the first time this _exact thing_ has happened to them. Still, they’d known _something_ was up when the giant seal in Roran had flared up and dropped them somewhere that was clearly Not Roran. 

Hawk is glad that they’d been sent out on their own and they don’t have Towa and Komachi with them during this particular piece of ridiculousness. The two career ANBU have adapted really well to the inclusion of Bat onto the team — and the inclusion of ridiculous missions after the inclusion of Bat — but ‘we’re in the past’ might be stretching it a bit for them. 

“So we probably shouldn’t, like,” Bat says, “change things. Do stuff. Upset the timeline and cause the universe to implode.” 

Hawk shifts. “Is that… a concern?” he asks warily. 

Bat pauses for a long and _totally not reassuring_ moment. “Probably not,” she concludes. “I _think_ we would just create a branching timeline and alternate universe. Overwriting our own timeline has issues like time paradoxes, so I hope it’s not that one, especially if we change things like _ourselves being born_ or _going to Roran and ending up in the past_. But, like, it’s not as though there’s any kind of study done on the topic or literally any way I could test that.” 

Still. It’s apparently something she’s thought about and, therefore, plausible enough that Hawk doesn’t want to risk it. He reaches up and takes off his mask, because this is a situation where ANBU facelessness is going to make them stand out more than just looking like a person. “Okay, so, total non-interference policy,” he says. “Super black ops, off the books, we were never here.” 

Shikako takes off her mask too, ditching it into hammerspace, and they strip the white, identifiable ANBU plates off to leave them just in their blacks. 

“I have some civilian gear,” Shikako murmurs with a frown, “but I don’t think I’ve got anything of yours that doesn’t have the Uchiha fan on it.” 

Sasuke shrugs. “This is fine,” he dismisses. “Those clothes wouldn’t exactly make us blend in anyway. Let’s just go make a camp. We’ll just keep our heads down, study the jutsu and work out how to go home.” 

“And do nothing to change the timeline,” Shikako adds. 

“And do nothing to change the timeline,” Sasuke agrees. 

* * *

The sun sets over the valley, painting the canopy below them orange and shadowed. In the interest of conserving their supplies, they build a smokeless fire and catch their dinner, which Shikako cooks while Sasuke draws out all the parts of the seal he saw with his sharingan. By the time night has settled in, Shikako is already studying the copies of the seal that Sasuke has provided and making preliminary notes in a fresh notebook. It’s too much to hope that reversing a seal this complicated is just a matter of, say, flipping it upside down but they _ought_ to be able to keep themselves to themselves and not ruin the timeline while she works out how. 

But then… a small chakra signature crosses her range. Something that would match an academy student, _maybe_ a genin. 

Sure, whatever. A kid out playing in the forest alone is _a problem_ but not necessarily _her problem_ since they don’t feel injured or like, dying of starvation. And they’re clearly a _ninja_ kid so they should be able to handle being lost in a forest. 

The problem comes with the squad of adult chakra signatures — chunin rank, maybe. 

The problem comes with the way the kid _runs._

“Ambush,” Shikako says, and is already moving to intercept. Sasuke is on her heels, promises of non-interference flying out the window just as quickly as her own. Theoretical concepts like _the timeline_ are less important than a living breathing child. That’s so obvious neither of them needs to say it. 

She’s twice as glad that she made the call when they see the kid, maybe eight or nine years old, small and clearly terrified, stumbling through the forest like he’s half-blind. He’s not doing a great job, tripping and stumbling, making enough noise for his pursuers to track by sound and leaving a clear trail to follow even if they couldn’t. But most damming of all is the red and white fan on his back. 

Sasuke stiffens beside her. 

They exchange looks. 

Shikako breaks off, heads for the kid. Sasuke loops back around, flanks the group of armoured men, gets behind them. They have a clan symbol on their shoulders, a double ended pitchfork, almost, and she struggles for a long moment to place it. Familiar, but not something she’s seen recently or in use a lot. 

_Senju._ Like the kid, they’re on the ground rather than in the trees. Their armor is the kind of bulky, useless junk that civilians and samurai tended to favor — or, _would_ tend to favor, decades from now. There are five of them, which is four too many to be even approaching a fair fight for the kid they’re chasing, and all of them look excited and eager. Bloodthirsty, with killing intent that’s spread like heavy fog in Shikako’s chakra sense. 

It’s the kind of sloppy control of intent that the Academy sensei had hammered out of them, about as soon as they’d had enough chakra to unconsciously produce intent — there’s no faster way to give your presence away to other ninja than slipping with your killing intent, letting them know you’re there and you mean them harm. 

“Hey,” Sasuke barks, sharingan spinning red as he drops from the trees. “Pick on someone your own size.” 

Shikako slips one of Sasuke’s shirts out of hammerspace and throws it on, feeling a little strange in a clan mon not her own, but they’ve picked a side. She drops down and scoops the kid up. He struggles, but he’s small, and inexperienced, and Shikako has no trouble keeping him from wriggling out of her grasp. She’s back in the trees before the Senju have even finished reacting to _Sasuke_ , let alone processed her actions. 

_So slow._

This close she can feel the fire natured chakra lingering on the boy’s tongue from the grand fireball jutsu he must have used to get enough distance between himself and the Senju to run. Glancing down at his dazed expression, looking at the way he squints his eyes, Shikako figures his night vision is probably completely blown from the light of the jutsu. 

He can’t see her hasty disguise. Annoying. She catches one of his flailing hands and presses it against the embroidered fan on her shirt. 

Behind them, the Senju men start yelling about “ _Another_ damn Uchiha!” and change their focus to Sasuke because, well, it’s very hard to ignore Sasuke when he wants you to pay attention to him. 

“Your friend!” the kid gasps, eyes wide, chest heaving. He’s been running hard for a long time, been _hunted down._

“He’ll be fine,” Shikako says, casting an eye over him relieved to find he’s not actually injured. “He’ll draw them away. They won’t come back.” 

She _hopes_ Sasuke is only going to draw them away but, like, she’s not going to protest if he decides murder is the only solution, okay? They were ganging up to kill a nine year old. 

“You can rest at our camp,” she decides, even though their camp is, in total, one unlit campfire. It’s in a nice clearing, though, and there’s no real reason to abandon it. It’ll make it easy for Sasuke to find them again, anyway. Not that he couldn’t find them if they went elsewhere, but no need to make it harder than necessary. 

She’s not entirely sure _what_ they’re going to do with the kid — try fob him off with excuses about being on An Important Mission and send him home? — but that’s a problem to deal with later. She’ll never feel sorry about deciding to save a kid. 

“So, uh,” she says, awkwardly, “what’s your name?” It’s a little too late to play it cool and pretend to not care about him, and according to her disguise she’s supposed to be part of his clan. She can’t _not_ try reassure him that everything is going to be fine. 

“Kagutsuchi,” the kid says, somewhat shyly. He’s looking around their not-really-a-campsite with uncertainty, glancing back the way they came like he can’t _quite_ believe no one is chasing them. But he’s looking at her with a certain amount of trust, like an adult showing up makes everything better. For a given value of adult. “Is he really going to make it?” 

She can sense Sasuke’s chakra moving westward with the group of Senju, zigzagging slightly and looping back a few times, maybe to try keep them grouped up together, or maybe to make them move faster when they seem to be slowing down. 

“Absolutely,” she says, trying her kindest smile on him, “don’t worry about him. I’m more worried about you, are you hurt? Did they get you with anything?” 

The kid shakes his head, long mane of black hair tangling around him. “No, I’m not injured. But I dropped all my supplies,” he says and it’s true that he’s not carrying any kind of pack. 

“Smart thinking,” Shikako says. “I bet you ran faster without it. I’ve got plenty to share, though, if you’re thirsty or hungry.” 

Depending on how long he’s been running — how long his mission or whatever was — he’s got to be at least in need of a drink. She distracts him long enough to pull a plain canteen out of hammerspace and a brown paper bag of a trail mix of nuts and dried fruits that _probably_ exists in some form currently in a way that she’s pretty sure a ration bar in foil packaging wouldn’t. 

When Sasuke returns, he looks no more worse for wear than if he’d taken a stroll through the Konoha marketplace — less bothered, even, given that that would have involved _people_ and _socialisation._

_Plans_? His quirked eyebrow asks. 

Shikako shrugs. 

“I ran them into an Uchiha patrol,” Sasuke says, voice probably too low for the kid to hear. He looks uncomfortable, which is fair. Clan is… a touchy subject at the best of time. And this is certainly not the best of times. “I stuck around for a while but they seemed pretty eager to kill each other so…” 

Well, that’s one issue taken care of. Does it count as interference if the people fighting each other are all natives of the era? Sure, there’s the old fable about stepping on butterflies but in Shikako’s experience it takes a fairly decent shove to move things off course. One battle between a group of chūnin doesn’t sound like that kind of shove. 

Saving one life can mean both everything, and nothing at all. 

That’s not the kind of thing she wants to bring up in front of someone who _belongs_ in this time, so instead she casts around for a way to break the tension and settles on blatantly lying to Sasuke. “You’ve got leaves in your hair,” she tells him, gesturing vaguely around the top of her head like he might have a whole branch’s worth of detritus caught there. 

Sasuke scowls and runs a hand through his hair automatically — it seems strange to see him without his Konoha forehead protector and the lack of it makes his bangs lie differently. “I do not,” he grumbles. “ _You’ve_ got leaves in your hair.” 

Sasuke slips behind her and there’s a tug on her braid, as he pulls her hair tie free. Then vigorously rubs his hands all through her hair to _mess it the hell up._

“Hey!” she jerks back, too late. Hair flops down over her eyes. It makes Kagutsuchi giggle so it’s not the _worst_ , but she shoves the hair out of her face and glares at Sasuke with no actual heat anyway. 

Sasuke smirks. “There,” he says, mockingly, and tilts his head at the kid who has definitely inherited the ‘wild’ version of the Uchiha hair. “Now you match.” 

She sticks her tongue out at him, picking gingerly at his Uchiha shirt that she’s wearing. She probably _does_ look Uchiha, is the thing. And better Sasuke find it funny than insulting, probably. It’s not like she would care if he slapped on the Nara symbol — her parents wouldn’t care either — but she is kind of wearing it for the purpose of _lying to people,_ so. That’s a thing. 

“Jerk,” she grumbles, without heat. “Anyway, I guess we have to work out how to get Kagutsuchi home. That’s where you were headed, right?” 

“Right,” the kid says, expression lightened and a little wistful watching them bicker. “I was only going back to the clan — I was nearly across the border when they caught up to me. Did the same thing happen to you?” 

Shikako is solid at her village history, but knowing the _exact_ locations of the borders of the founding clans is a bit beyond her. Also they moved a lot as clans won and lost ground, a fluid boundary more than anything fixed on a map. She might be able to find the old Nara compound — because most of the old Nara places were still in use as farms — but the Uchiha one? Not a chance. 

It’s kind of a moot point because— 

“Incoming!” She flashes the ANBU sign for ‘A- to S-rank’ at Sasuke just in case he can’t pick it up from the sudden _alarm_ in her voice. 

The enemy is strong, heading right for them, and _fast._

She bounds to her feet and pulls the kid behind her. Her hands flex, ready to draw-and-throw kunai out of hammerspace the instant they’re called for. 

Sasuke draws his sword, readies it to block. He’s the better choice for front-guard, able to predict and react faster than her, especially in the dark. The sharingan isn’t exactly night vision, but it can make a little light stretch a long way and the night isn’t particularly overcast. Unless Shikako is willing to out herself as a Nara and use Shadow Sight, she’s already at a disadvantage, and that’s not counting for the kid she has to maneuver around. 

The enemy bursts out of the forest, sliding to a stop in the grass and leaving deep furious furrows in the dirt under his feet as he bleeds off speed. His chakra roars and snaps like a wildfire in the peak of summer, burning and thrashing, filling the air with thick but formless intent like unbreathable smoke. He’s armoured in bloody red, carrying an oversized sword. His hair bristles wildly. His sharingan is almost glowing with brightness. 

Behind her, Kagutsuchi is only just starting to scramble to his feet, completely outclassed and out of his depth. Judging by his sheer terror, he knows it. 

This is _extremely bad._

“Oh, good,” says _Uchiha Madara_ , with something that appears to be relief. The wild burning of his intent — rage lashing along all their nerves — doesn’t fade, but he sheaths his sword, stepping back out of his ready fighting stance into something a _little_ more conversational. “You’re all unharmed. We were afraid the Senju hunting party had claimed you.” 

Shikako looks at Sasuke. Sasuke looks at her. 

Don’t attract attention. Don’t interfere. Stay out of it and go home. 

_Oh, we have fucked up,_ they communicate wordlessly. 

“Uh. Yep,” Shikako says, hoping her clear and obvious Lack Of Being An Uchiha is not about to get her murdered. That would suck. She likes being unmurdered. “We got away from them. No problems.” 

That does not really appear to fly with _Uchiha Madara_. If possible, he starts to frown even harder. His chakra surges out again, like a heat wave, and Shikako would really like him to _stop_. Like, ideally, to not be here and not be looking at her or knowing she exists at all, but failing that just… not keep trying to flay her with his chakra. She might be developing a rash. 

Sasuke inches even closer to her, apparently also feeling the impending murder about to happen. She thinks about telling him that in event of murder he should run the _other_ way, but it’s not like he’d listen. 

“Where,” Madara says, tone _absurdly_ reminiscent of Iruka-sensei spotting someone up to mischief, “is your _gear_?” 

He’s _still_ bleeding killing intent in the air, but it’s not unlike Kakashi-sensei when they’ve been hurt or injured. Maybe it’s not _meant_ for them, just for the ‘Senju hunting party’ — presumably the squad of Senju men they’d just rescued Kagutsuchi from. 

They’re wearing standard blacks, kunai pouches and thigh holsters. Sure, if they were on a long term mission they probably ought to have backpacks, but they could make a story about having to abandon them because of an attack. And sure, Shikako is a _little_ light on equipment because hammerspace is far superior but it wouldn’t have been too strange to run into a Konoha ninja dressed like this for a long term mission. 

“Sword?” Sasuke offers, uncertainly. It’s still in his hand and he raises it up, twisted flat and sideways so that it’s not an offensive move. 

Madara manages to frown even harder still. “Is this what we are reduced to?” He demands, though apparently not of any of the three of them. “Sending children out without armour? Without even proper clothing? To freeze to death before they even make it to the battlefield?” 

Shikako barely resists making a face and knows Sasuke isn’t that far behind her. They’re not _kids_ , for starters, and implying they don’t have the chakra control necessary to temperature regulate in the frankly pretty temperate Land of Fire climate is just insulting. 

Kagutsuchi doesn’t seem quite so capable of shaking Madara’s unfocused killing intent off as they are, so Shikako drags the kid close to her side and wraps him in a cocoon of chakra that should at least protect from the worst of it. Help. Something. She isn’t an expert at positive intent, but Nara do have slight advantages there, with more experience manipulating spiritual energy. 

He stops shivering, though he doesn’t stop looking frightened and clutches tightly at the loose hem of her shirt, plastering himself to her side with more vigour than he had even when she’d rescued him from death-by-Senju. It’s good she has the ability to turn completely intangible because it would be awkward if they were attacked and she couldn’t react because a child was blocking her in. 

“Follow me,” Madara orders. 

Sasuke and Shikako look at each other again. 

They weigh their choices but it’s not exactly like they have any _options_ here. Going with Madara seems like a bad plan, but it also seems the lesser of two evils, and there’s the kid to think of. Even if they thought they could fight or flee _Uchiha Madara_ , doing so while keeping a child safe was another story altogether. And it’s not like they can _not_ go with him without admitting the whole ‘not actually part of your clan’ thing. 

Eh. He won’t be present forever. They can just… keep their heads low and then sneak out before anyone in the Clan of Photographic Memory realises that they don’t belong. 

_Good plan, Shikako,_ she thinks to herself, sarcastic even in her own head, as _Uchiha Madara_ ushers the three of them into the welcoming grip of the clan compound. 

Even if they assumed it was merely to march them into a greater trap, what greater trap is there than _Uchiha Madara_ himself? 

Instead, Madara leads them unerringly through the forest, away from Konoha’s mountain — the mountain that would one day be Konoha’s mountain — towards what turns out to be the old Uchiha homestead. 

Or. The current Uchiha homestead, technically, given that the Uchiha don’t even _know_ they’re eventually going to abandon this place to move wholesale into Konoha. It’s large and centralised, a village in itself. Currently, it’s stirred up, like a kicked over anthill; there are many ninja milling around, some seeming to be on duty, some seemingly returned from a fight, and other people anxiously waiting to see if there is more fighting to be done. Compared to the darkness of the forest, the compound is a beacon of blinding light, with torches and lanterns ruining any remaining night vision. 

Madara strides through them all and they part like the ocean before Moses. He doesn’t seem to notice their scattering. 

“Hikaku!” he shouts into the crowd. 

There’s no response, then a middle-aged lady struggles out of the crowd, fighting her way closer. “Hikaku is still on the field,” she says, almost breathlessly. “Oh! You — you found him!” She takes in Sasuke and Shikako as well and amends herself. “Them!” 

“Ohabari-oba,” Madara says, curtly. He tucks his hands together, hiding his fists in the long sweeping sleeves of his robes. He _still_ hasn’t stopped with the intent, though it’s more a gentle simmer now than trying to scald off their skin. “The Senju didn’t manage to do any harm before they were driven off by our patrol. The children retreated to the cliffs, but weren’t injured. Have you — has anyone — located their guardians?” 

“Homusubi is here,” Ohabari says, promptly. “She said Kagutsuchi was due back earlier and has been very worried. I don’t… I don’t know for the others. No one else has come forward.” 

She turns apologetically towards Sasuke and Shikako, looking confused but not suspicious at her lack of recognition. It’s true that the clan is large enough that no one can be expected to know every member, but still. Shouldn’t it be a little strange? 

Shikako and Sasuke exchange an awkward glance between themselves. Are the Uchiha really… buying this? A single shirt and set of sharingan and that’s all it takes for the Uchiha clan to assume they belong? 

“There’s no one,” Shikako says, awkwardly. “Thanks, though?” 

This answer doesn’t really appear to make Madara happy, if the increasing heaviness of the air is anything to go by. 

“Deal with Kagutsuchi,” Madara directs Ohabari, with a quick flick of a glance at the kid still plastered to Shikako’s side. “They’re coming with me.” 

There’s a quick flash of … something, across Ohabari’s face, worry or anxiety, but she gives a small bow and opens her arms towards Kagutsuchi. The kid launches himself from Shikako to Ohabari, as though they’re safe points in a game of The Floor Is Lava. 

Shikako looks at Sasuke. He shrugs but his body languages is deliberately relaxed and Kakashi-casual. Ready to fight. Better if they follow Madara away from the crowd, if they’re going to be in danger — there are too many people here who might get caught in the crossfire. Or join in against them. 

_No way out but through_ , she thinks, and they both fall into step behind Madara, flanking him in a wide V formation like an honour guard. Better to keep him at an angle than fall into single file behind him where they can both be struck down together, better give themselves as much range as possible with which to react, especially because Shikako can’t use shadow jutsu. 

Once again the crowd falls away as Madara leads them deeper into the Uchiha homestead. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to dawningstar for betaing!

The boy looks so much like Izuna that Madara’s heart _aches_ with it. 

It’s not uncommon, not unusual for distant clanmates to share similarities, but he can’t deny that it alters his perceptions. The boy _can’t_ be a close relation, because Madara’s always kept track of even second and third cousins meticulously, but the resemblance is so close that Madara _must_ usher the two teenagers towards his own house rather than handing them off to Ohabari-oba. It’s not that he doesn’t see their shuttered looks or the way they hang back, out of grabbing range, as if Madara might turn on them, but Madara will not leave it to others to see them properly outfitted. 

The house is cold and dark. The only light comes from the paper lantern that Madara had taken from the outguard staging area to light their way and it’s clear that there’s no one in the house waiting for him. It’s clear too, in the lantern light, that the house is uncared for and has been for weeks — there are piles of autumn leaves littering the footpath and crunching underfoot, the stone toro lantern outside the front garden remains unlit, the dead seasonal plants in the garden haven’t been cleaned away. 

Izuna had been the one to make sure someone would come to weed, rake, and trim. Izuna had been the one to make sure the engawa would be scrubbed, the unused rooms dusted and aired, the tatami replaced. The house is still just as stately as it’s always been, but it’s clearly no longer a home. Madara does not miss the way the teenagers flanking him hesitate to step into the genkan, pausing at the threshold and not entering until after Madara has his shoes off and is waiting impatiently next to the wilted ikebana arrangement. 

The boy moves first, always first, the girl’s foreguard, stepping through the doors and slipping off his sandals. There's something strange about the sandals, but it's too dark to see any details. Once he's put on the slippers and stepped into the entrance hall, the girl follows — and her sandals are odd in the same way, too. They point their shoes out towards the door, like the guests they are, and follow him deeper into the house with footsteps that make absolutely no sound. 

Madara’s skin prickles both with the usual distaste of necessarily allowing someone to be behind him and — when he turns to lead them into the formal waiting room and catches the boy out of the corner of his eye — with the dreadful, creeping sensation that he’s being followed by Izuna’s very ghost. 

The two teenagers are stiff and wary when he turns to face them, but that’s not an unusual reaction from the clan these days. Not an unusual reaction from the clan _any_ day, because Madara has never set people at ease, though now it’s worse than it was before. Kagutsuchi had barely looked at him, had said nothing, and the stress on his face hadn’t faded until he had been away from Madara. No one feels safe with Madara around anymore. 

“What are your names?” he demands, belated, realising he doesn’t know. The younger child he’d vaguely recognized from one of the endless funerals Madara has attended as head of outguard; Kagutsuchi is the only remaining child of a minor lineage. But these two...there’s only so much that memorising the clan rolls helps, in putting names to faces, when he barely interacts with the people of his clan. 

“Sasuke,” the boy says. Then a long pause. “She’s Nakano.” 

The perils of having a compound next to a river — there must be fifty ‘Nakano’s within the clan. ‘Sasuke’ is less common, but it doesn’t help Madara place this boy at all. 

They’re probably siblings, Madara guesses, looking at how closely aligned they are. How easily they stick to each others’ sides. The communication without words. 

He misses his brothers. The place Izuna should be, has been for twenty years, is a gaping, empty hole. 

“Stay here,” Madara instructs, abandoning them in the main formal room of the house, and — for the first time since Izuna’s funeral — crosses the interior engawa to the east wing of the house and enters his brother’s room, struggling only briefly with the poorly-waxed sliding doors. 

It’s nothing but blunt practicality. Izuna doesn’t need these things any longer. There’s no reason for them to remain here, unused and untouched. No reason but sentimentality. 

Sentiment has never saved anyone. 

Almost numbly, Madara gathers it all up. Coats, one new, almost unused, the other patched and darned and worn. The full plate armour that had done nothing, in the end. The lighter half plate that Izuna had preferred, until the fighting had reached its worst. Heavy shirts. Trousers. Gloves. The fireproof armbands and legwraps to protect against fire jutsu backlash and burning embers kicked up on the ground. And supplies, basic items, anything it seems like they might need: shuriken; kunai; ninja wire; Izuna’s entire camping set. 

The clothes the teenagers are wearing are worn thin and soft. The boy’s arms are bare. They have no protection — nothing at all. Especially the girl, who isn’t even carrying a sword. 

He pauses for a long moment and then picks up Izuna’s sword. It’s sheathed, clean, and freshly sharpened — Izuna had always been meticulous about caring for his blades, so Madara had done it for him while they waiting for the end together. Even knowing he was dying, even without the strength to sit up, Izuna had insisted that his blade should be ready for a fight. 

All Madara can see is Sasuke and Nakano dead on the battlefield. One strike, one hit… that’s all it would take. 

He doesn’t want to see Izuna die again. 

He sees it every night. 

Madara bundles the clothes all up, takes it out to the main room and drops it into their arms. “Here,” he says, gruffly. 

“Uh,” the girl says, “thanks but—” she catches it, anyway, automatic politeness overriding her denial. “It’s really not necessary—” 

“You have _one shirt between you_ ,” Madara says. He doesn’t miss the way it’s too big on her, that she’s wearing a worn-thin long sleeved shirt underneath it. 

Is this really the state of things in his clan? That those at the lowest end have so little? 

They both pause. “He’s not wrong,” Sasuke says, almost reluctantly. 

Nakano winces, slightly. 

He wonders if her denial stems from pride — not wanting charity — or fear. Maybe both. Do they look at him so warily because they expect a trap, because they wonder what it will cost them? But Madara can’t back off just because they’re afraid. 

Madara crosses his arms. “Put it on.” He’s perfectly willing to force them to do it, if they won’t bend — he’s torn the scab off this wound by going through Izuna’s things to collect it. He’ll be damned if it’s _refused._

“It seems, um. Bulky,” Nakano says. “I’ll just… not get hit...” 

That is the _stupidest plan_ he’s ever heard and he hopes his withering glare informs her of the fact. 

It must, because they exchange an indecipherable glance and then concede, setting the piles down and beginning to pick through them carefully. It’s only when he catches a surreptitious glance at him — and when both pass by the padded undercoat that goes under the armor — that he realizes that they may not _know_ how to put it on. 

Sasuke has a too-familiar look of concentration on his face, a slight furrow of the brow as he looks between the undercoat and overcoat as if both are equally unfamiliar. 

Madara focuses on Nakano. Her face is unfamiliar, her armor will need more adjustments, and Sasuke will pay more than enough attention so long as Madara is close to his sister. Madara will be able to help both this way, give them the knowledge they’ll need to survive — they shouldn’t even be out of the homestead if they don’t even know how to put _armor_ on, and Madara will talk to Hikaku about keeping them back and getting them real training, but the fight doesn’t always stay out in the field. Especially if Hashirama is starting to turn to Senju Butsuma’s old playbook. 

“Undercoat first,” he says, pulling it out of Nakano’s pile and handing it to her. She pulls it on slowly, and of course it’s too large on her; Izuna wasn’t exactly tall, but he was fully grown and Nakano isn’t. Still, that’s an issue that hemming will fix, and it will give them room to grow into it. The armor, though… 

He picks up the half-plate and begins adjusting the straps, explaining how to make sure the armor is fitted properly, or as close to proper as it can be. It won’t be perfect — it won’t be anywhere even _close_ to perfect — but it will protect her if there’s fighting before properly fitted gear can be made for her. 

It’s possible that this is a mistake, of course. Hopefully the half-plate will be enough for her, hopefully she’s been hanging back behind Sasuke because she uses ninjutsu and genjutsu and wire, provides mid-range to cover Sasuke’s preference for close-range, hopefully the false reassurance won’t embolden her to approach her enemies and die that much quicker. Ideally, she can actually _fight_ and he isn’t sending someone helpless out to die. 

Madara drops the armor over her head without warning, ignoring the way her shoulders hunch and how Sasuke shifts in the corner of his eye. Adjusting one side of the armor to the best fit it can be, he talks her through doing the adjustments on the other side herself — aware that Sasuke is following along to the side, just as tense as his sister. 

He doesn’t check the fit of their armor like he used to do with Izuna. Instead, he has them check each other’s, pointing out where Sasuke’s full-plate differs from Nakano’s and what they should do about it. He has to be sure they can use this equipment before he lets them out of his sight. Nakano had as much as admitted they don’t have anyone looking out for them, teaching them. They hadn’t even seemed to recognize Ohabari, and she hadn’t recognized them — but Madara shies away from considering the deeper implications of two isolated, neglected orphans existing in the clan. He can only focus on fixing what’s in front of him. 

“The wraps and armbands, too,” Madara insists when they’re finished with the armor. Even Kagutsuchi — five or more years younger than them — already had the fireproof wraps all Uchiha wear, so it’s nearly unthinkable that Sasuke and Nakano won’t know how to put the wraps on themselves, but Madara has also just had to teach them the very basics of suiting up for heavy combat. 

Sasuke takes his share of the armbands and leg wraps from Nakano and sets to putting them on with the right technique, the fire-proofed side out. Nakano hesitates. She inspects the wraps and armbands carefully, like they’re something new, and glances as her brother out of the corner of her eye. Looking to copy him. 

“I’ll show you,” Madara insists, even though he’s so, _so_ tired. Someone has to teach them, and Madara is the one who’s noticed the problem. Besides, Madara’s taught this before. Not for a long, long time — not since Izuna had to learn, not since Madara grew old enough to intimidate his younger clanmates without even intending to do so — but he can do it again. He can do it again to keep these children safe. 

He focuses on Nakano and Nakano only. She deserves his full attention. He keeps his tone as level and quiet as possible, dredges up the words he used when he explained to Izuna while trying not to think of Izuna at all. 

Madara explains: The softer side goes against your skin. The other side is fireproofed. Don’t tie the armbands too tightly. Make sure the legwraps overlap. 

Her pulse is racing when he ties her first armband on while explaining how to do it one-handed, for all that she looks composed and relaxed. She lets him wrap one of her legs for her without protest, and watches the demonstration intently in a way Madara knows is really about assessing danger. 

Madara orders Nakano to wrap her other arm and leg by herself and nods sharply when she does so adequately. He shakes out the coat he selected for her and stares at her until she cautiously turns and sticks her arms into the sleeves, then pushes at her shoulder until she turns to face him again. He briskly fastens the front of it, taking any excuse he has to not turn and look at Nakano’s sibling. It’s… he wouldn’t say it’s better, that he’s doing this for Nakano — but he’d fastened Izuna’s coat for him, so many times. He was always impatient, always wanting to get _moving_ , and when he was Sasuke’s age he almost never bothered to fasten his coat before leaving. The thought of doing it again, for Sasuke… 

Only once she’s fully geared up does he look at Sasuke, who’s been hurriedly putting on his own wraps, his own armbands, and even one pair of the gloves. 

“I can put on a coat myself,” Sasuke rushes to say, as Madara picks up the other mantle, but when he takes it from Madara he only slings it over his arm and steps back out of Madara’s reach with haste. With fear. 

Sasuke looks _so much_ like Izuna. He’s like a painting done from memory, just slightly wrong, lacking sharingan crispness — Izuna’s teenage face paired with his adult clothes, every bit a sharp stab of memory, even down to the way Sasuke carries the mantle like he’s daring Madara to try and force him into it, but all of it still somehow _wrong_ together. 

Izuna had never watched him with that unfamiliar wariness. Madara can’t possibly pretend that they’re the same. 

Madara shoves the rest of the supplies he’d gathered at the two and makes Nakano take the lantern. “Go,” he orders them, knowing they’ll be relieved to escape him at last. 

They go and Madara watches them or he thinks he would never be able to tell, with the way their footsteps remain silent and even the front door makes no sound as they open and close it. The lack of noise, Izuna’s coats walking away… it feels like he’s been visited by ghosts. 

The house is still and dark and empty again. Madara doesn’t even make it to his room — instead, he nearly collapses next to the low table he’s spent most of his days at since Izuna’s death and tries to forget the taste of grief. 

He expects that to be the end of it. 

By all rights, that should be the end of it. 

* * *

“We’re _so lucky_ ,” Shikako says with a slightly shaky sigh, as soon as they’re out of chakra assisted earshot of the house. They’re bundled tightly in second hand clothes with their arms full of the rest, and quite bewildered. 

Sasuke gives a quick nod, shifting the coat slung over his arm until he’s holding it — and everything else he’s carrying — more carefully. 

Shikako’s own pile of things, including the new sword, wobbles precariously as she tries to arrange everything such that she can hold the lantern out properly to light their path. It’s been a long time since she’s had to deal with having her arms full. 

Her pulse is still racing and she suppresses shudders of releasing tension, like she’s somehow just finished delivering a speech to a hostile crowd without getting a negative response. It seems over the top _ridiculous_ that they’d walked into the dragon’s lair, half an hour into the worst lie of their lives, and escaped not just _unharmed_ but unquestioned and better supplied than they’d arrived. 

They’ve been given genuine Uchiha, _period appropriate_ gear. Quality-wise, their future gear is unquestionably better — but even their ANBU blacks are nothing like anything anyone else has been wearing. They don’t blend in well and right now that could be _lethal_. If it hadn’t been night time, with the low light and bad vision…. Well, even _with_ that advantage it’s clear Madara had seen something about them as _wrong_. 

He’d just assumed a natural cause — poverty — not that they were infiltrators who hadn’t planned ahead. 

They intend to retreat somewhere safe and quiet — maybe leave the compound altogether, if they can avoid the guards and patrols — but someone must have been watching for them because Ohabari, the woman Madara had handed the Uchiha kid off to earlier, hurries towards them only minutes later, before they’ve even decided which direction to wander in, let alone find somewhere to start looking at what else Madara gave them. 

“Did he hurt you?” she asks, almost anxiously. “I was very worried when Madara-sama stormed off with you like that.” 

She looks them over, an inspection that Shikako thinks would come with hands on their shoulders, turning them this way and that, if they knew this woman from the Daimyo and she felt she had any real familial claim on them. As it is, she restrains herself, and only looks at their new duds with worried wrinkles in the corner of her eyes, her friendly smile pulled tight with anxiety. 

Shikako tries to imagine one of her clanmates — Kofuku-ba, maybe — see someone come out of a meeting with her father and immediately leap to ask if they’d been harmed. And it’s not just her, because she can see Sasuke pause and assess, too, struck by how bizarre that question is. 

Shikako has plenty of reasons to be wary of _Uchiha Madara_ , not just because of their current lie, but it’s another thing for one of his contemporaries to leap to the same conclusion. History is never particularly transparent — especially in a ninja village — but as far as Shikako knows, up until the Valley of the End, he’d done nothing worth being afraid of. For his allies, anyway. 

Unless he had. It’s not a mystery Shikako feels any particular urge to solve — she just wants to get them somewhere safe and work out how to go home. 

“We’re fine, Ohabari-sama,” Shikako says politely, guessing at appropriate honorifics. Hopefully that’s polite _enough_ , and not overly presumptuous. Shikako gestures awkwardly with the hand holding the lantern at the pile of things she’s clutching to her chest “He let us have some new stuff, so we’ll be, uh, less likely to get hurt in the future, hopefully.” 

“Oh, but it’s — it’s not really _new_ , is it,” Ohabari says, in a way that’s not at all a question. Her face pulls into a terrible grimace as she says it, before being papered over by a smile again. She ushers them down the street with a strange urgency. “Come, come with me. You’ll need some tea to settle your nerves.” 

Ohabari seems to be someone of reasonable importance in the clan, if Madara was treating with her — the ‘oba’ might be a respectful title for an older woman or might be a legitimate family reference, Shikako doesn’t know enough Uchiha clan history to make that call. 

_She_ ’s the one who looks like she needs something to settle her nerves, and also like she’s not the sort of person whose invitations can be refused without reason, so Shikako agrees, intending to try to subtly question her for information and at least find out who Ohabari thinks they _are_. It’s not as if following this Uchiha could be as dangerous as following Madara, and Shikako would put money on herself and Sasuke fighting anyone short of him. 

Not that she means for them to fight. It just seems like an important fact to keep in mind. 

Ohabari’s house is somewhat near Madara’s, or at least, in what would amount to the same suburb, and probably what counts as ‘fancy’ in olden times, lit by lanterns in the garden at its front. Shikako can’t judge, really; simply being in a traditional style makes her inclined to think it fancier than it is, when really no one in this day and age has a choice about that. There’s no doubt that it’s better kept, though: compared to Madara’s dark and chilled house, with its unkempt garden and unlit lanterns, Ohabari’s house is neat to a fault. Everything looks to be in perfect condition. 

For the second time that night Shikako and Sasuke take off their sandals and put on slippers, but this time they are gently urged rather than ordered around. The entrance hall is warm and dry and _welcoming_ , unlike the damp, pervasive chill to the air in Madara’s house — it feels _lived in_ , like a home, rather than like a crypt. 

Ohabari takes them further into the house than they’d gone into Madara’s, to a small formal seeming room with some kind of small hearth — an irori, Shikako thinks they’re called but she’s not sure that _any_ Konoha house had anything of the sort, even the old fashioned ones — and suspended kettle. She settles them at a low table with a maternal kind of bustling and pours hot water into a pot probably filled with tea leaves. 

There are other chakra signatures in the house, including one that might be a sleeping child. 

“Thank you for the tea, Ohabari-sama,” Shikako says, because expecting Sasuke to take charge of a _conversation_ is asking a lot. “It’s very kind of you to meet with us so late. It must have been a busy day for you.” 

They have _got_ to work out what’s going on here — the general shape of it is clear, with Kagutsuchi being hunted down by Senju and rescued, and them along for the ride, but the finer details are much more important and much harder to grasp. Who is Ohabari? How is she involved? What does she expect Sasuke and Shikako to do from here on out and how do they get out of it? 

_Someone_ has got to be suspicious about the fact that no one recognises them. Shikako would really like for them to _not_ be hunted by the entire Uchiha Clan while trying to reverse engineer very delicate time-space techniques. That just sounds terribly unfun. 

“Oh, well, I could hardly _wait_ to talk to you,” Ohabari says, and clearly doesn’t mean it in the ‘I was looking forward to it too much’ sense. “Who knows what might have happened to you?” 

“What might have happened to us?” Shikako asks, widening her eyes as artlessly as she can manage. It’s not a look that would have fooled… anyone… who knew her, but apparently it’s enough for a stranger. Pretending _not to know_ things makes her feel like a bit of a ditz, when the subtext of ‘something bad’ is coming through very clear, but she… doesn’t actually know. 

“Oh, well, who _knows_ , with Madara in such a mood,” Ohabari hems and haws and seems to fluster herself again, shivering delicately. “We’re all very lucky nothing came of it, aren’t we?” 

Shikako notes the complete lack of honorific. Familiarity or contempt? Important or not important? “I suppose so,” she says, uncertainly. “Wasn’t it… lucky he was out fighting the Senju?” She prompts, looking for _something_ on the situation with the Senju. Is it out and out war out there? Is it the occasional skirmish? 

How many children are killed by full teams of adult shinobi? 

“Oh, of course,” Ohabari says instead, and pats her on the hand, firmly and a little patronising. “We wouldn’t have wanted anything to happen to you, of course. But no, no, much better for him to stay up in the main house, out of the way.” 

Beside Shikako, Sasuke starts to frown. Just a little, just a hint of a crease between his eyebrows, but for Sasuke, it’s a lot. 

“In fact,” Ohabari says, as if trying to move the conversation along. “We should probably get you some other gear, it _really_ wouldn’t be wise for him to see you walking around like that.” 

_That_ makes Shikako and Sasuke look at each other, both uncertain. 

“He… gave it to us,” Shikako points out, just in case Ohabari missed that and thinks they, like, raided his house and stole it. Accusations of theft are the last thing they need. “He was pretty insistent about us wearing it.” She looks down, as if demure. ”I mean, _obviously,_ we couldn’t afford such fine quality gear, and it’s very generous of Madara-sama to give us his own—” 

“No,” Ohabari cuts in suddenly. Then, quieter: “No, they weren’t his. What you’re wearing was Izuna’s. I would recognize it anywhere. Anyone in the clan would. So you can see… if he changes his mind… it would be very dangerous for you to be seen in it. Especially—” she looks at Sasuke. “Well. With such a strong resemblance.” 

“He gave us his brother’s things?” Sasuke repeats, interrupting bluntly. It’s the first time he’s spoken since Ohabari turned up outside Madara’s house. Shikako looks at him with surprise because, well, she kind of expected him to gladly let her do _all_ the talking. He glances at her, and then looks back to Ohabari, laser-focused. “Why would he do that?” 

“Oh, who knows?” Ohabari says. “Madara-sama has been... very unwell, you understand. Better to leave him alone, particularly now.” She gives a very tight smile to them. “We will get you some other gear — properly tailored and fitted, of course — since you have nothing but it would be best to leave that here.” 

Sasuke says, “What we have now is fine.” 

“Yes,” Shikako agrees, because she can’t do anything _but_ back Sasuke up when he’s made up his mind as firmly as he clearly has. She doesn’t have any particular attachment to these things but it’s not like they really need _more_ useless armor and they can’t pay for anything anyway. Ideally, they won’t be around long enough for things to be _made._ “Yes, we really couldn’t—” 

“You will, you’ll both meet me here tomorrow at noon and I’ll see that you are properly outfitted.” Ohabari interrupts. Again. She’s actually very rude, for an auntie. “And you’ll leave everything Madara gave you here with me. I’ll look after it.” 

Ohabari speaks to them now firmly, like a woman who’s used to being listened to and doesn’t understand why they’ve even wasting their time with token protests. 

“We’re keeping the armor,” Sasuke says flatly. 

“You will leave it with me,” Ohabari repeats, this time with just the hint of a threat. 

Shikako and Sasuke have been threatened by people far more intimidating than a middle aged Uchiha housewife. They remain unimpressed. 

Sasuke asks, “Are you going to try to take it from us?” which from someone else might be an anxious, worried question but from Sasuke is definitely a challenge. 

It’s clear that Ohabari isn’t going to be a good source of information, and also even _more_ clear that Sasuke has used up his entire supply of patience with her. If they didn’t have some kind of very flimsy cover to keep, he probably would have outright invited Ohabari to physically fight him over it. 

Since they _do_ have a very flimsy cover to keep, the pretext of being orphans or whatever, it’s probably best to bring this conversation to a close as rapidly as possible. 

Shikako sets her teacup down and stands, which is very abrupt and definitely rude but it’s not like Ohabari has been a paragon of tact and manners during this conversation. Sasuke stands as well, and moves directly to the entrance hall to gather up the small pile of things they’d set down before sitting with Ohabari. 

“Ohabari-sama, I know you’re just trying to look out for us—” Well, probably. In some fashion. “—but Madara-sama was very insistent that we take these items and keep them, so it doesn’t feel right to let you store them for us.” Shikako dips into a bow. A very shallow bow. She bows more to signal that the conversation is definitely coming to a close than to show respect. 

When Ohabari starts to respond, Shikako takes the liberty of just _assuming_ it will be on the topic of meeting for more armor the next day. 

“We’ll meet you tomorrow,” Shikako lies hastily, as she and Sasuke back track to their shoes and slip them on. “Thank you so much for the tea, and everything. I hope Kagutsuchi-kun is okay. See you tomorrow.” 

And then they’re ducking out of the house into the garden, then to the street — free at last. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Voldecourt for betaing, and to everyone else for your great comments! We've... been too busy editing/writing to answer... but will try to reply to some of you soon.

After they leave Ohabari’s house, Sasuke follows Shikako through the streets of the Uchiha compound, out of the residential neighborhood and into what looks to be a district of shops and workspaces. At the first opportunity Shikako extinguishes the lantern and tucks it away into her hammerspace, which gives them back some much needed cover of darkness. The moonlight is more than enough to see by, once they get their night vision back. 

Shikako directs them to a wide dark alley between two one-story buildings for them to stop and regroup in — not exactly a secure location, but Shikako probably picked this alley based on the buildings being empty. 

It’s really useful to be on a team with such a strong sensor. 

Shikako starts putting the pile of extra stuff Madara gave her into her hammerspace, and Sasuke passes over most of the things he’s carrying as well. They both uncover a small hoard of ninja wire, folded into the nest of extra clothes like precious cargo, and that consumes their attention for several moments as they test it for strength, chakra conductivity, and so on. Later, they’ll want to unspool a few of the coils of wire to get an idea of how long each piece is — it’s a bad idea to work with equipment you don’t know know everything about. 

“This is really high quality,” Shikako says, sounding almost surprised. While Sasuke has been testing the wire by having a few inches of it free of its coil and bending it into simple shapes with his chakra, Shikako has freed a whole foot and a half. When he looks over she goes from making an uchiwa with the wire to making the Nara mon. “See?” she adds. “Responsive. I could make seals out of this.” 

“You’re terrifying,” Sasuke says appreciatively. 

“Thanks,” Shikako says, her grin sharp. She re-coils the wire without touching it and disappears her half of the hoard into hammerspace. 

Sasuke replaces the Konoha-made wire he already has with the same amount of Uchiha wire and then gives the rest of the Uchiha wire and all of the Konoha wire to Shikako. If they’re really going to blend in they should probably hide all of their Konoha-made items in Shikako’s hammerspace, but that’s not a task to be accomplished while huddling in an alley and trying to figure out where to go next. 

“Since we’ve been let into the compound and no one seems suspicious about us,” Shikako says thoughtfully, “maybe we should stay? We passed by a lot of training fields on our way in that were inside their patrols — if their security is lax enough to allow it, it might be less annoying to just camp there instead of camping in contested land.” 

Sasuke nods. On a normal mission, especially a mission that was an ANBU mission until about six hours ago, Sasuke would scoff at this suggestion and make Shikako really explain herself before agreeing because Sasuke trusts her, obviously, and she’s always dozens of steps ahead of everyone else, but her idea of ‘acceptable risk’ is... occasionally skewed, and most people wouldn’t think sticking around the clan they’d accidentally infiltrated was a good idea. 

But this isn’t a normal mission, and Sasuke can already see the shape of her plan, the hint of the plot she’ll be dragging him into before they leave, and he’s already itching to see it get started. 

“Intel now or tomorrow?” he asks. 

Shikako’s lips twist in thought as she considers. “We should test their security now, together,” she says. “But everything else can wait for tomorrow. If we know what we can get away with, you can handle the intel while I work on the seal. Hopefully that’ll get us out of here faster.” 

Anyone can go unnoticed standing between two probably-empty buildings, though, so testing their security means finding some ninja. Sasuke shrugs the Uchiha-style coat Madara had provided over his armor so that he’ll blend in better in the unlikely event that he’s noticed. Shikako, still wearing everything exactly as Madara had put it on her, looks like any of the dozens of Uchiha men and women they’d passed on their way through the compound to Madara’s house. 

It turns out most of the ninja are still gathered where they’d been earlier, although they’re no longer scrambling around like a kicked-over anthill. Now they stand and sit in tight groups, all of them tense, like cats ready to pounce. There’s more of them than he expected and he wonders what portion of the clan’s strength is gathered here, how highly this ranks on their list of responses. 

He and Shikako creep around the edges of the clearing carefully, in full ANBU stealth. Their visual concealment technique works _best_ amongst the forest and shadows, things that distract the eye for camouflage, but it’d be poor stealth if it couldn’t handle inspection. In Konoha, ANBU teams run over the rooftops on patrol and only attract the attention of the most elite Jounin — usually those with some ANBU training themselves. 

When carefully circling the crowd garners no reaction, they grow a little bolder and infiltrate the crowded press of agitated Uchiha, and then, because they need to know _for sure_ where the line is, start pushing boundaries. He knows from personal experience that ANBU stealth is good enough to trick an active sharingan, but… Sasuke plucks a leaf from a woman’s hair. Sasuke waves his hand in front of the woman's face. Sasuke walks inches behind a man who hurries through the crowd, so close that without the use of jutsu the man would be able to feel the puff of Sasuke’s breathing on his neck. 

Stealth techniques and counter-techniques had improved exponentially once the village came together, and Konoha ANBU are on the very leading edge of _those_ , so it’s really not the fault of these pre-Konoha Uchiha that they’re so outclassed, but Sasuke still feels kind of embarrassed for them. 

The man he’s following walks directly to the Uchiha who seems in charge of the clan’s response against the Senju, an exhausted man with brown hair scraped into a high ponytail sitting at a table that’s clearly been moved out here from elsewhere to give the guy a place to put his maps and paperwork. 

“The Senju have at least doubled their patrols,” the man Sasuke’s been following says. He steps up to the table, gestures across the map. “Here and here. And Kumano say that Tobirama is lurking between the two lines. They’re taunting us.” 

The man sitting at the table scowls at the mention of Tobirama — not a natural expression for his face to slide into, but clearly heartfelt. “Taunting our clan head,” he corrects. “Or _trying_. Spread the word that no one should mention Tobirama’s involvement to Madara-sama unless Tobirama crosses the border. Did we kill the child-hunters?” 

“Maybe half of them,” the man says. “Two-thirds, if we’re lucky and the ones that got away injured have the common decency to die of their injuries or stay maimed and kill themselves for being useless now.” 

“Senju are never decent, Takehaya!” someone standing near by interjects. There’s a fair crowd hovering around the desk, either reporting in or waiting for more orders. Or gossiping. They largely turn away after that update, but it’s clear that they’re still listening in at least a bit. 

Sasuke steps away from Takehaya and hops up to crouch on top of the desk instead, where he can memorize the maps and paperwork — he’s not sure where Shikako is, but she’ll appreciate a copy of the map later even if she does come over and look at it now. He can also see Takehaya’s face, now, and recognize him as one of the men who’d been a part of the Uchiha patrol he’d run the Senju into while leading them away from Shikako and the kid. 

“What about the kids?” Takehaya asks. “The one we saw surprised the hell out of us, dropping down from the trees and — well, you know. Looking like he did.” 

“Ohabari-oba said Kagutsuchi-kun was uninjured, but we don’t know about the other two.” The man’s fingers drum against the table. “Madara-sama wanted them to follow him, so she didn’t even get their names.” 

Takehaya’s eyebrows rise. “We don’t even know their names?” 

The man behind the desk picks up a scroll and holds it out to Takehaya. Sasuke has to lean out of the way so the exchange can take place; neither ninja registers anything amiss. 

“‘Unknown orphans, no known lineage’,” Takehaya reads out loud. “Damn, Ohabari-sama even checked with all the foundling houses and no one claimed responsibility?” 

“We have no idea who they are.” The man behind the desk runs a hand over his already-exhausted face and seems to age ten years for having admitted this. 

“If the child hunters had caught them, we wouldn’t have been able to complete their clan rites,” one of the eavesdroppers butts in, horrified. She turns fully away the group she’d been standing with to face Takehaya and the man behind the desk. “We couldn’t enshrine them without their _names_.” 

“If they’d died out there, we wouldn’t have even known they were gone unless we found the bodies,” says the man behind the desk, sounding like this whole scenario is his worst nightmare, “because no one reported them missing. Not even _after_ the clan was put on alert for Kagutsuchi’s absence.” 

“That’s not right,” Takehaya says. There’s a general muttering of agreement and shifts into talk about a census to supplement existing records of clan children, but Sasuke’s time is up and he has to go meet Shikako again. He springs off the desk over the heads of several Uchiha, lands in the middle of a group of loosely-circled Uchiha and then makes his way out of the crowd from there without anyone so much as blinking. 

Around the corner, Sasuke finds Shikako already waiting for him. He’s expecting it, but the sight of her still causes a pang. Even though he knows she isn’t an Uchiha… she looks like she _fits_. 

Shikako says, “I think we could have done anything short of fighting to the death in that crowd without being noticed.” 

“If we stuck to taijutsu, they still probably wouldn’t notice us,” Sasuke says dryly. “I’ll have no problem tomorrow.” 

They retreat to the other side of the compound, away from the commotion caused by the Senju, and find what’s _probably_ a training ground, where they can make a barebones camp in a small knot of trees. 

They set up traps together around where they’ve decided to camp. While they work, they swap information gained from creeping through the mob of agitated Uchiha. Madara is on Sasuke’s mind still, especially as he bends and stretches against Izuna’s armor as he sets up perimeter traps with Shikako, so he starts with what he’d heard said about the Senju on the Uchiha borders. The child hunting. He tells her, reluctantly, about Tobirama lingering almost in reach to goad Madara, like killing the man’s last brother hadn’t been enough — the Nidaime has always been her favourite. 

Shikako pulls the last tripwire taut between two trees and makes a face, a little twist that's part distaste and part disappointment but not really _surprised_. “Yikes,” she says. “At least he’s later than Kakashi-sensei, so it won’t work. Everyone I heard talking made it sound like this was the first time Madara has been out and about since Izuna died.” 

“He hasn’t been leaving his house?” Sasuke asks. “For how long?” 

There’s something there about Madara and his house: a thought just out of reach, the obvious neglect of the house and surrounding garden, the lack of upkeep Sasuke had noticed between looking for exits, between watching Madara dress Shikako in armor like he was wrapping something fragile to be packed up and shipped far away. 

Shikako ties the tripwire off and then puts one of her flash-bang seals on top of it — if someone’s caught by the wire, the noise will make it obvious and the flash will ruin their night vision. “Three weeks since Izuna died, a month since his fight with Tobirama. They treated him showing up to that fight like it was unexpected, so we probably don’t have to worry about that.” 

They wind their way inward, setting up more traps as they go — the trap instructor at the Academy used to tell them that the only part of the word “overkill” that mattered was the “kill” part, a mentality Shikako has definitely taken to heart. As they continue to work, Shikako provides a few more interesting pieces of gossip, the kinds of things they’d be expected to know about as members of the clan or might find useful to work into excuses. 

Sasuke, still turning the problem of Madara over in his head, can’t help but return to Madara’s apparent self-imposed isolation: “Doesn’t he have clan duties?” 

“Someone named Hikaku has been taking over his duties as … Head of Outguard? Clan head?” She shrugs. “Whatever his job is.” 

Shikako takes a spare tarp out from hammerspace so they can string it up above them to keep any rain off of them and hide the soft glow of LED seals from anyone casually glancing in the direction of their camp. The tarp is already the right kind of mottled green and brown to blend in with the trees, but Shikako will add a seal to anchor a henge to the tarp to disguise it further. She passes the top end to Sasuke, who leaps up into the trees to anchor it in place while she fixes the ground level ropes in place. 

“I think Hikaku was the guy at the desk,” Sasuke says. “Everyone was reporting to him.” He tries to sift through his clan knowledge, but as a kid he’d never had much interest in the ancient history of the clan and after— well. It hadn’t really been a consideration. “I think he became clan head after Madara. For a little while.” 

Shikako nods, thoughtfully. “He was also police chief, right? I think his portrait was in the police HQ.” They’d focused more on how the police had functioned toward the end than how it had been started, but no one would ever accuse Shikako of passing up the opportunity to dig for information. 

“Yeah,” Sasuke says. Perched on the underside of a branch, he has to focus on tying knots on the tarp for a second, but then he can add, “He had a report on us, too. Ohabari checked up on us but found nothing.” 

And okay, fine, it’s wrong to gloat about her complete failure — especially when they haven’t actually _done_ anything to cause it — but still. 

“How suspicious are they?” Shikako asks. 

“Not very, actually,” Sasuke says. “They believe we’re part of the clan still, so they’re not like. Hunting us.” 

“As if they could,” Shikako mumbles because, yeah, their little escapade had proven they could very literally walk right under the Uchiha’s noses. 

Sasuke drops down to the ground while Shikako applies the henge seal to the tarp and then sets up the LED seals. Since they’re not going to cook anything just yet, the rest of camp set up will mostly involve Shikako pulling things out of hammerspace, which isn’t really something Sasuke can help with. He moves on, instead, to removing the armor he’s wearing. The indigo overcoat has to go first, and while pulling it off Sasuke discovers something he was too rushed to notice when he put it on — the inside is a complex, embroidered patchwork showing Susano'o killing Yamata-no-Orochi, whose eight severed heads wind down the inside of the arms of the coat. 

When did he forget that most of the indigo Uchiha coats were like this? Why did it take holding one in his hands to remember? 

Shikako drops to the ground finally and makes a surprised noise at the sight of the reversible coat. “I think mine’s like that too,” she says, and then takes her coat off to check. Her coat has Susano’o spread wide across the back, with the sun on one shoulder and the moon on the other. The stitching isn’t as detailed and the effect is a little ruined by the obvious patches, but Shikako still traces her hands over the rays of the sun on one shoulder, the delicate pattern of constellations on the other. 

The coats are beautiful, and so is the armor, in it’s own way. It’s functional — or as functional as giant plate armour can be — but also personalised and enameled with designs that complement the patterns in the coats. They’re meant to be seen and recognised, rather than the mass produced blandness of Konoha ANBU armor or flak jackets. 

Both sets of armor are littered with scratches, and a few of the pieces Shikako’s wearing are clearly replacement pieces for plates of armor that were too damaged to continue to be useful, but nevertheless both sets are detailed and intensely personal. Definitely hand-painted and specially commissioned for Uchiha Izuna, but not produced for _just_ the look of the thing. 

And now, with Izuna dead and gone, Madara gave them all this gear for the utility of it. To keep them safe, even though he must have also assumed them to be of low social standing — unnoteworthy clan members he’s never before met and might never meet again. Ohabari had been rude as hell about it, but looking at the armor now... of course she was surprised, almost _horrified_ , to see orphans in such fine equipment — and with the way she’d emphasized Sasuke’s resemblance to Izuna… 

They tuck the armor and coats and extra pants and everything else away into bags Shikako whipped out of hammerspace and emptied of anything suspicious. Sasuke also sorts through the equipment he’s carrying with him, while they’re at it, and lets Shikako ink storage seals into his kunai pouch for all the things he needs to carry with him — blood replenishers, rehydration packs, soldier pills, and so on — but would have a hard time explaining. 

Shikako is quiet. Probably already planning how to most spitefully ignore Ohabari’s orders to stay out of it. She sets up her traveling desk and Sasuke lays out their sleeping rolls.. 

“So, what are we doing about Madara?” Sasuke asks, as the silence draws on and Shikako doesn’t speak up. 

Shikako jolts and looks at him with a fine mix of confusion and alarm. “Uh, what? Nothing, preferably?” 

He gives her an exasperated look. “Ohabari told us not to go near him, and to meet her tomorrow. I assume we’re not actually meeting her, but what are we going to do about Madara?” he clarifies, because apparently she wants to play coy about her plans to meddle in Madara’s life as if productive, invasive medding isn’t her main hobby. 

For a long, long moment, Shikako says nothing. She looks down at the desk, arranging the things Sasuke will need to copy down the maps he saw earlier. “I thought we would just avoid him,” she says eventually. Reluctantly. “He doesn’t leave his house, so it’s not like it would be hard, and avoiding him would be best for our cover. For the mission.” 

Sasuke blinks at her, and rapidly reconsiders everything that’s happened since Madara showed up at their campsite to protect them from the Senju. Because Shikako — now that he’s looking for it, it’s _obvious_ — Shikako had been trying to disengage from that situation the entire time. The weird way Madara’s clanmates treat him, the oppressive, dark hole Madara is living in, and even Ohabari’s insistence that they stay far, far away from Madara hadn’t really touched Shikako. 

When she’d been deep in thought earlier, she’d probably just been thinking about getting them home. 

Slowly — disquieted to find himself in the position of convincing Shikako that they should stick their noses in someone else’s business instead of the other way around, Sasuke says, “But... he gave us stuff?” Sasuke gestures at the bags they’ve packed Izuna’s coats and armor into. “His _brother’s_ stuff,” he continues, because Sasuke can barely wrap his head around it. 

He’s gone through this kind of loss before, even if it’s been years at this point. If one of his teammates _really_ needed something that had belonged to one of his clan — he’d be willing to give it to them. But giving it to a _complete stranger?_ That’s different. 

Madara has had less than a _month_ since his brother died. 

“We _should_ thank him,” Sasuke insists. It’s not just a formality — it’s not like Sasuke ever gives a shit about manners. 

So he doesn’t mean they should just _say thank you_ , whether or not they’d said the words in Madara’s house before. He means that… there’s a connection there. They need to return it, to even it out, to offer _something._

“Yeah, that’s… meaningful,” Shikako says after a moment. “But is it worth the risk? We need to lay low. Going back to Madara isn’t a safe plan.” 

He stares at her. She seems serious, but being serious about doing nothing, when something clearly needs to be done, is unlike her. “ _Yes_ ,” he insists. “We need to. And… is there anyone there with him, right now?” 

“No,” Shikako replies promptly, starting to frown. “Should there be?” 

“Yes,” Sasuke says, uneasily. Going home to a cold and dark house, staying alone… it’s not _good_. “ _Someone_ should.” He doesn’t know _who_ exactly — Madara is a powerful figure, but a lonely one. Apart from Izuna, there had never been any other names mentioned in the same breath, not until the brief partnership of Hashirama-and-Madara that had ended in flames. 

Shikako doesn’t respond but he _knows her_. She’s not cruel. This would hardly be the first time they’ve gone off mission just to help someone, for nothing more than because it was _right_. 

And yeah, they’re a little further from home this time, a little more lost, but that doesn’t make it less necessary. 

“It’s Uchiha Madara,” she says with a sigh, looking at him from lowered eyes like she’s urging him to _think about it_ , about who that is and what it means. 

Konoha’s first missing nin. The man that could stand on even ground with the legendary First Hokage. The power. The danger. 

The grief, thick and lonely. 

“We need to,” he says, staring at her levelly. 

She sighs again. “Okay,” she says, and even if she’s not totally in agreement… she’s on board. Which is good, because Sasuke isn’t sure how he would go about helping _alone_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> donahermurphy posted an AU of this fic on fanfiction.net!
>
>> **[Complications](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13259835/1/)**  
>  Shikako and Sasuke take an unintentional journey to the past, and Izuna causes some... complications.
> 
>   
> Also...
> 
>  **A serious request from all three co-authors:** please avoid referencing [the Brooklyn 99 meme about puppies](https://ballmemes.com/i/i-didnt-understand-why-people-care-so-much-about-their-d111215332844c6da14c2bb85e307098) in the comments because it's actually referencing an upsetting topic, specifically suicidal ideation, which we'd prefer not to have that emailed to us.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to fishebake for betaing! 
> 
> Also y'all this was like the 4th revision of this chapter, it was such a mess! Though some of the delay was because of DoS Ex, of course.

Sasuke and Shikako sleep lightly, but remain undisturbed through the night. Shikako had suggested she stay up and keep watch with her sensing, but given their assessment of the Uchiha security and their own laying of traps, that hadn't seemed worth it. Better for them both get a full night’s sleep and be at their sharpest for the next day. 

"Is there anyone with Madara this morning?" Sasuke asks, attempting to be casual, while they build a small fire for a warm breakfast. It’s not the most important fact of their situation, but it’s the one that sticks in his mind the most. 

"No," Shikako says, lighting the campfire with a quick fire chakra trick and pulling food supplies out of hammerspace to make breakfast. "We should check their defenses again." 

They need to do a more thorough investigation of how the clan's military force works; Shikako's sensing is good for identifying people and maintaining their secrecy, but it doesn’t actually grant them _knowledge_ about the clan and their capabilities. 

Sasuke manipulates a stream of wind chakra to provide extra oxygen for the fire, making it burn hotter and reducing the smoke to almost nothing. "I can do that while you work on getting us home," Sasuke says. 

Shikako nods and he can see her weighing the importance of information gathering against the urgency of working on the seal to get them home. But their brief testing of the Uchiha clans defences yesterday had proven that Sasuke would be more than adequate to continue on his own — better to divide their attentions to separate problems. 

“If I can, I’ll see what’s up with the Senju as well,” Sasuke adds. 

“Send a shadow clone,” Shikako suggests, like he wasn’t on a team with Naruto too, then frowns and flexes her fingers. “Have you… tried to summon since we got here?” 

Sasuke frowns too. “No,” he says. Because the hawks _would_ be a good reconnaissance tool, if he could use them. “I don’t… feel that connection anymore.” 

“It makes sense,” Shikako says with the bland logic that means she feels it too and it feels like losing something. “Effectively, we haven’t signed the contract yet.” 

“I’ll use a shadow clone,” Sasuke agrees, clearing the hurdle of that conversation by avoiding it entirely. “Maybe one that doesn’t look like an Uchiha, unless I really want another fight.” 

“Like they’d be worth fighting,” Shikako says, rolling her eyes. 

After breakfast, Shikako takes out the map he'd copied last night and shows him where most of the activity seems to be so he knows where to go and then he leaves her up a tree in the training field. They've packed up most of the camp so she can leave instantly if there’s trouble, but they’ve set down another round of traps and between those, the seals, and her own sensory abilities, that’s probably the safest and most well defended tree in the entire damn compound. 

She’d seemed perfectly content with the location, but Sasuke keeps an eye on the weather and looks for any comparable indoor locations they could move into. It’s not that either of them have issue camping in the rain, but working on seals and trying to take notes would almost certainly be more complicated if her papers kept getting wet. 

And, well, he’s not going to ask how long it might take. Shikako will work as fast as she can, to the best of her ability. But if it does end up taking time they shouldn’t stay in just one place. Rotating camps is a standard ANBU tactic for long term missions for a reason, even if the ninja here don’t really stand any chance of finding them. There’s no reason to be sloppy. 

The compound itself is even bigger than he'd thought the night before. It isn’t walled in like Konoha, but the buildings all seem to cling together anyway, in a defensive huddle. The Naka river swoops in a curve along one side of the compound, miles and miles upstream from the part of the river that joins Konoha, but still the same river. 

If that feels like a metaphor that just means he’s been hanging out with Shikako too much. 

In the light of day, he can see that it's larger than the Uchiha compound in Konoha just from the number of buildings. It's almost a small self-contained village unto itself, including a number of fields currently in use for farming which Sasuke skirts around on his way to where Shikako had said all the military activity seemed to be focused. 

Out of the immediate compound, where the staging area for the fight had been last night, things have calmed down. Hikaku and his desk are gone, but the patrols still seem to be heavy. Sasuke heads towards Senju lands until he finds a familiar face to follow — Takehaya, the man from the night before who'd been leading the Uchiha patrol Sasuke had led the Senju to and later talked to Hikaku. Soon after Sasuke starts following him, he stops an Uchiha patrol consisting of two ninja. 

“Senju Tobirama has dropped back,” Takehaya says. “Or, at least, hasn’t been sighted for a few hours. And Kumano sensed him retreat out of range.” His hand is on the hilt of his sword, though Sasuke can’t tell if it’s a threat or because he _feels_ threatened. 

"The Senju know exactly what Kumano's range is, so that means practically nothing," says one of the Uchiha. 

“He’ll be back,” says the other Uchiha, “the bastard always is.” It’s strange to hear such vitriol about a man Sasuke has only ever thought of as _Hokage_ — one of us, the leader of _us_ — and an unpleasant reminder that this time period is at constant _war._

"It's probably a trick," Takehaya agrees, and tells the Uchiha to keep alert and be cautious and then continues on, taking a confusing zigzag pattern that lets him intercept patrols in quick succession, spreading the information through the ranks quickly. Most of the Uchiha defer to him like chūnin talking to elite jōnin — he’s not in charge, but he’s obviously high in the clan. 

When they reach the outer patrols, where the front lines must be, Sasuke sends a shadow clone on ahead to the Senju. Naruto's discovery that shadow clones can look like _anything_ is useful here — Sasuke doesn't have Naruto's flare for absolute bullshit, but he can make a clone that doesn't look like him, a clone that doesn't look like an Uchiha at all. 

The clone flits off in the direction of the no man's land that Sasuke and Shikako had landed in the day before, looking for Senju. Sasuke continues to follow Takehaya, who contacts several more patrols and then makes for what must be the Uchiha front lines — a loose collection of camps full of combat-ready Uchiha, half of whom seem to be acting as sentries, looking across a wide fire break. The half of the war group who aren't watching for the enemy are eating what looks like a very poor breakfast of cold rice and dried meat. 

Takehaya gives a nod to a man who has the same far-off look Shikako gets when she's concentrating hard on her chakra sense. The sensor — who must be Kumano — waves absently. 

"Anything new?" asks one of the men. 

Takehaya shakes his head. "Everything is quiet." 

"I don't trust it," one of the others mutters into his rice and jerky. 

No one replies. Takehaya summons a crow, which takes to wing without any further instruction, wheeling towards the Senju as it fades behind a genjutsu. This seems like it's going to take Takehaya awhile, so Sasuke creeps through the trees above the Uchiha, noting who sticks close to who and what kinds of weapons they have. 

The people near Takehaya, in the back, have what Sasuke is pretty sure counts as better armor for this period. The men at the front are a little more care-worn and a little lacking in equipment; only about one in three has a sword, and a few of them lack the standard indigo overcoat. It leaves a bad taste in Sasuke's mouth, but at least none of them are younger than sixteen or so, older than him and Shikako. He'd half expected to find the front line stocked with toddlers, given how the history lessons at the academy had presented the Senju–Uchiha conflict. 

The weirdest thing is that none of them are in the trees. The trees aren't even trapped. 

When the crow comes back and flutters to a landing on Takehaya's shoulder, it croaks that everything is the same with the Senju, then takes flight again with orders to report to Kumano if anything changes — Takehaya continues on his route to intercept patrols and keep them updated. 

Not that he has anything new to tell them. 

Back on his route, Takehaya runs into a woman one of the small outposts between the front line and the compound. The outposts are similar to the sentry outposts for Konoha, except of course they aren't carved into the trunk of a Hashirama tree since there _are_ no Hashirama trees in the area yet. Instead, this one is tucked under a fallen tree with plants growing over it. Like the others Sasuke had briefly ducked inside and checked, its stone block construction is hidden by plant life and genjutsu. From the outside, it looks like an animal den at most. 

The woman has a long list of supplies on a scroll and is checking what's written there against what's stored in the outpost — which isn't much, if you ask Sasuke. There hadn't even been a proper first aid kit in the other outposts he'd checked, although there's probably a good chance of the outposts being overrun, so of course they wouldn't want the Senju to be able to get their hands on much of anything. Most of what the outposts are stocked with is good for setting traps; rope and wire and kunai, the kinds of things you'd use to make enemies trying to follow your retreat regret it. 

"Inventory isn't usually until the spring," Takehaya says, eyeing her suspiciously. His chakra is sharp and tense, putting out more intent than his statement really deserves. 

She lowers her eyes, like a nervous genin. Or a child in front of a bully. "Hikaku-sama requested that we do it now, in case..." She trails off, but her meaning is clear to Sasuke: in case the clan goes to war. 

Her meaning must be clear to Takehaya as well, because he huffs and passes on his news before letting her return to her work. Takehaya clearly means to continue on his route, bringing info to even more far-flung border patrols, but Sasuke sticks around to shadow the woman counting supplies instead. 

He has to turn his attention towards assessing the Uchiha infrastructure and resources. It's important to pick apart how any potentially-hostile community functions. Generally this is done in preparation of potentially needing to upend some critical system to complete mission goals or provide a chance for neat exfiltration, and although he and Shikako won’t need to deliberately sabotage the clan, gathering the information needed to do so is a standard part of reconnaissance. 

The woman visits another half-dozen tiny forts, all disguised to look like natural parts of the landscape. In the middle of her fourth check, when she's muttering to herself about how well-supplied 'Tajima-sama' had kept the outposts while only allowing inventory _once a year_ , Sasuke's clone is popped. 

He doesn’t have Naruto’s familiarity with the jutsu; the clone’s memories slam into him with a slightly scrambled haste, the lingering taste of panic and rising adrenaline from the last moments of its existence causing Sasuke to freeze where he is. It’s impossible for Senju Tobirama to be _right behind him_ , for there to be a sword through his chest and the blink of light that Sasuke thinks might be the legendary Hiraishin… but his memories insist that that’s what has happened. 

_Well, shit_ , he thinks and breathes deeply to let the panic fade, performing an immediate sweep of his surroundings to settle himself and check for danger. 

His shadow clone hadn’t even had a chance to fight back. One second it had been watching the Senju reporting to Tobirama — the next it had been dead. No warning, no alarms raised, no questions asked; Tobirama had noticed him, sensed him maybe, and gone straight for the kill. 

Carefully, he turns to look back towards the forest — towards where the Senju camp is. _Maybe_ there will be reasonable doubt. _Maybe_ the Senju wouldn’t attack because of it. From what he had gathered, they hadn’t been _looking_ to attack — he hopes he hasn’t pushed them into it. 

The returning memories show him that the clone snuck across the firebreak and into the Senju frontline with ease. Unlike the Uchiha frontline, the Senju frontline was staffed with older shinobi only, or at least what passed for an older shinobi in the pre-village era. It was staffed with less people, too: only about half the Uchiha's number, which had confused him until one of them called their camp the _forward_ base. 

Assuming the Uchiha were right and the Senju did know what Uchiha Kumano's range was, it would make sense for them to keep their people back behind that range. That fact alone makes the Senju seem more prepared, better organised, than their Uchiha counterparts. 

It’s not just clan pride that makes him dislike that — it’s that, if the Senju are winning, if they are stronger… there’s even less excuse for them to have hunted Kagutsuchi through the forest. It wasn’t a mistake or a misunderstanding or desperation. 

“Won’t be long now,” one of the Senju mutters. He’s staring across the distance towards the Uchiha clan, hand on the hilt of his sword. There’s a faint sense of _anticipation_ surrounding him, leaching into the air. “Those Uchiha have shit for patience.” 

They’re all on the ground, just like the Uchiha. Sasuke darts easily above their head — it would be easy for him to take this whole group out, even as a clone, but that’s not why he’s here. 

“They’re already attacking our patrols again,” another says darkly. He spits to the side in disgust and there’s _actual_ killing intent radiating off him, the desire to kill. “Should have never listened to Butsuma’s boy. Did Kurumi make it back?” 

“He did,” the first says. “Most of his squad didn’t.” 

There are similar complaints around the base — vitriol and sentiment not so different from what the Uchiha had been saying about the Senju. Sasuke tries to note it as dispassionately as possible and not take offense, but he’s frowning darkly to himself by the time he moves towards their rear base. 

Which is where Senju Tobirama is. The Uchiha who had suspected he was waiting just out of range appears to have been right. He has his own command desk, like the one Hikaku had used the night before, with maps and things, but there’s a much wider empty space around it. No clanmates gossiping here. 

He looks tense, glaring down onto the maps, and is fully armoured in blue plate with his sword at his side, looking like any of the images of the Nidaime, straight out of their Academy textbooks. But despite the tension, there’s none of the simmering Killing Intent that seems to follow everyone in this time and place like a noxious cloud. 

As Sasuke waits and watches, tall woman with an upknot enters the camp and makes a beeline for the table. 

“Tōka,” Tobirama greets her curtly without looking up as she comes into speaking distance. 

“Evacuation of the children and elderly is proceeding as expected,” she says, just as curtly. “Mito-sama is keeping everyone calm and thinks that it should be completed by tomorrow.” 

_Evacuation?_ Sasuke sharpens his focus, paying close attention. _This_ seems more promising information than overheard insults. There’s no cause he knows about for the Senju to be _evacuating._

Tobirama seems to frown even harder at her news. “Over twenty four hours,” he mutters, displeased. “That’s too long. We need to streamline the process.” 

Twenty four hours is a _very_ long time. In the Konoha Academy, they’d done thousands of drills, until the entire school could be packed up and tucked away in the Hokage Mountain within the hour. As a kid he’d always assumed the drills would never be used… but the invasion during that Chunin Exam had put it into practice and not a single Academy Student had been harmed. Sasuke wonders how many of those drills were spawned right at this moment, as Tobirama contemplates the inefficiency of it all. 

“It’s efficient enough,” Tōka bites back. “Leave it be, Tobirama, and focus on the situation at hand.” 

Tobirama glowers at her, red eyes narrowing with offense at her words. Sasuke has already picked a side — the Uchiha side — in this conflict and he doesn’t _want_ to be amused by it, but it’s such a Shikako thing to be offended by someone rejecting the idea of _improvements._ He’s pretty sure she’ll be offended on his behalf when he tells her of this conversation. 

“Has there been further movement from the Uchiha?” Tōka asks. 

“No,” Tobirama grinds out. “Madara is stationary within the compound. The Uchiha patrols are heavy but they haven’t made any incursions.” 

He’s not focused on the Uchiha as a whole, but on Madara _specifically_. The Uchiha had speculated that Tobirama was there to draw him out, was bait in a trap because Madara could never refuse the chance to fight the person who had killed his brother. But he’d withdrawn back here, out of range, to where it could only be _speculated_ that he was. 

Sasuke narrows his eyes and keeps watching. If there is a trap, he wants to know about it before it springs. If it isn’t… then what _is_ it? _Something_ is going on with the Senju, but he has even less idea of what than he has about the situation with the Uchiha. 

Tōka and Tobirama exchange more words but don’t give Sasuke much more to work with, before moving away from Tobirama’s desk, which is covered in meticulous notes and detailed maps. If people aren’t going to conveniently talk about the fighting where he can overhear it, maybe the notes will have information. 

He glances at the departing backs, checks his stealth, and slips down towards the desk. 

Then— 

Panic. Light. The sharp point of a sword. The rush of chakra as the clone disperses, memory laden chakra returning to Sasuke where he remains safe behind the Uchiha front line. 

_Not ideal_ , Sasuke thinks, but it could have gone much worse. His clone had taken a risk getting that close to the _Nidaime_ and this time it hadn’t paid off. Even Konoha ANBU stealth only goes so far and — after their extreme success with it so far — that’s something they need to keep in mind. 

He steadies himself from the influx of clone memories, gives a final glance at the Uchiha staging area, and then finally circles back around to return to the compound. By this time the streets are busy with Uchiha going about their business, but it's easy to track her without detection by taking to the rooftops, which are sloped and tiled and have gutters that feed into rain barrels. 

The rain collection is probably for both convenience — so that everyone doesn't have to go to the river to get water all the time — and security — because it's probably easier to poison the river than it is to sneak around and poison every single rain barrel. All of the buildings have them, even the buildings that clearly aren't residences, including the set of large buildings in the center of the compound that the woman Sasuke is following heads straight for. 

The building the woman enters is the clan meeting house. She heads not for one of the large rooms in the front of the building but instead for a tight hallway in the pack of the building, where she first looks into an empty office and then knocks on a closed door. 

Another woman, this one older, opens the door. The room behind her is a frightening riot of paperwork and scrolls. "Yunomine," she says. "What is it?" 

The woman Sasuke had followed here, Yunomine, she says, "Ah, Aramasa, Hikaku-sama isn't in his office, but I completed the survey of the—" 

Aramasa waves towards the back of the building. "Hikaku's probably putting out some fire. Probably Ohabari, I think I heard her bitching in his office earlier. Go look for Ohechi out in the storehouses, he's the one actually keeping track of what supplies have been counted. I only care about _people_." 

Yunomine bobs a nervous nod and ducks out the back of the building to the storehouses, where there's a swarm of people there taking inventory of rice and oil and wood. 

Yunomine weaves through the small crowd, looking for the guy Aramas had mentioned, and Sasuke lets her go, turning his attention to investigating the contents of the storehouses instead. 

There’s rice in bulk. There’s dried fish and meat and fruit, and all sorts of pickled goods, along with things that he can’t immediately identify. There are bins of salt and blocks of brown sugar. There are massive jars of oil, metal bars and rods and scraps in bins, and bolts of cloth — both the deep blue of the coats that the Uchiha wear and undyed fabric. 

It looks like far more than necessary to keep on hand, to Sasuke, but he’s used to Konoha’s stores, and only getting what he needs as he needs it. But… The Uchiha don’t have access to the kind of supply chain that Konoha does. They don’t have suppliers and delivery contracts. 

This is all the Uchiha have, and they need to make it last to survive. 

“Is it enough?” one man worries. “If the Senju look to cut our supplies off—” 

“We won’t know until it’s all counted,” his companion says. “No use borrowing worry. Besides, Ichikishima and Hetsu are due back soon, and I heard they were being paid in rice.” 

Sasuke backs away and leaves them to it. That’s more than enough information for him to take back to Shikako on the state of the clan and supplies. He hopes her day has been equally as productive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VagabondDawn remains allergic to servers bigger than a bread box, but if you want to find me and Pepper, we're both on [the Heliocentric server](https://discord.gg/rCtwMQG).


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shikako and Sasuke regroup, seek out new intel, and try to do something nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unbeta'd except by the three of us because it's been ages since we updated and we didn't want to wait. Thank you for sticking with us!

As they cook dinner, Shikako listens to Sasuke’s recounting of the intel he’s managed to pull together over the day. It’s not all _good_ news, but it’s better than the half of the conversation that she’s going to have to contribute. Shikako has no good news at all. 

“And they were doing a census of the kids,” Sasuke says. “Orphans, most likely. So, even if they think we slipped through the cracks… they’re going to start wondering _how._ ” 

And finding nothing. Which is equally as suspicious. 

Shikako nods. “We probably need to get ourselves on those lists, then,” she says, as calmly as she can. She’s mostly just listened, except for being vehemently grateful that Sasuke _had_ ended up sending a shadow clone to investigate the Senju side. 

Danger is so much a part of their life that they usually just shrug close calls off — but here, so far from home where they only have each other… If Sasuke had been killed — if he’d even been seriously injured — what could she even _do_? 

There’s no way they can fight off Senju Tobirama. There’s no way they can counter the _Hiraishin_. Sasuke hadn’t even had time to _react_. They’ll be dead before they even know they’re in danger. 

Unless… she can find a way to make the barrier seals auto activate fast enough. Bypass the need for reflexes altogether, a final safety net against ambushes and teleportation... 

Sasuke is regarding her seriously. “On the lists,” he repeats, dragging her attention back to the current conversation 

“We just have to find out where they’re keeping them, what kind of information they’re recording, who is taking it…” This is easy, this is standard protocol. They’re taught how to do this. They can handle it. Okay sure, long term infiltration isn’t something that either of them specialise in, but Shikako learnt a whole range of intel skills from Aoba and they’re both trained in how to _spot_ infiltrators. 

“We’re not exactly going to be able to convince _people_ that they remember us,” Shikako adds, “but there should be some old records we can adjust, or some recently deceased shinobi whose writing we can forge to provide ourselves an alibi.” 

Sasuke isn’t deterred. “You’re talking long-term infiltration.” 

Shikako swallows and gives the stew pot an emphatic stir. “Depends on your definition of long-term?” she offers weakly. “It’s not… it’s not going to be quick,” she admits, caving. “I barely know where to start. I spent all day just… just trying to break it down and understand it and barely got anywhere. It’ll take weeks. Maybe months, to get any kind of working prototype.” 

She can see the way Sasuke absorbs it — the way he’s tried not to think about it and now has to acknowledge the doubt that had been lurking in both of them since the moment they arrived. Team 7 has always been insanely lucky, to go with their insane bad luck. It seems… impossible, almost, that this won’t work itself out. 

But Shikako has no script here. She doesn’t _know_ how to make this get back on track. Would going back to Roran, to the source, help at all? Or would they only end up further and further into the past? Roran is far away, anyway, and the seal itself one of their most guarded locations — if they're going to consider it then it's an option for later, when all else has failed. 

“We can do that,” Sasuke says, voice steady with determination. “We’ll visit the clan meeting hall tonight and look for the records.” 

Shikako lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. “Okay.” 

Sasuke nods and quiet falls as they eat. Then he sets his plate aside and says, “Madara.” 

Shikako is too tired to fight him on this again right now. “He hasn’t left the house,” she says. “There was a visitor, twice — I think Hikaku but I can’t tell all these Uchiha apart yet — but they didn’t stay for longer than ten minutes.” 

It’s not even that she’d been monitoring him _on purpose_. But his chakra was _right there_ , like a fire near flammable items, like a predator on the loose, and her mind had kept flicking back to it like a nervous tick, checking and double checking and triple checking, always aware of the sheer _danger_ of him. 

She watches Sasuke frown, harder than she thinks is necessary. She can hear his insistence that _someone_ should be there, someone should be doing something — and of course he’s decided that he’s going to be that someone. 

Of all the Uchiha he had to attach himself to, why _Madara_? But he has. She just has to… do damage control. “Okay. So. What’s our game plan?” 

There’s a tiny, petty bit of satisfaction about throwing it back in his lap and making him plot it out. She’ll back him, all the way, even if this kills them both, but he’s going to have to work for it. 

“…Let me think about it,” Sasuke says. 

It’s not quite dark after they finish dinner, and the Uchiha are still working busily all over the compound, including in the clan meeting hall and the storehouses behind it. Shikako can feel the bright Uchiha chakra patterns still ambling around that area. She isn’t sure if this is standard for their hours of work, or if its a reaction to the last few days, but it does mean she and Sasuke have some time to kill. 

"There were some buildings that looked unoccupied," Sasuke suggests as they clean up from dinner — put out the fire, covered the pit and erased their tracks. 

Shikako shrugs. Working up a tree hadn't been _so_ bad today, but it certainly won't work for long term infiltration. It won’t give them _information_ , but empty and abandoned places have their own uses. 

Looking at the empty buildings, it becomes clear that the Uchiha have been in decline for awhile. Not just because of the number of empty buildings — although signs of a shrinking population certainly aren't good — but also the state of the buildings. Barns and sheds and houses, a small neighborhood, and all of them aren't just unoccupied but _abandoned_. Stripped of anything useful and forgotten. 

She and Sasuke give all the buildings a cursory inspection, and meet up at the one that seems to be in the best shape. There's a roof, at least — mostly — and the floors are warped and splintering but still solid. It gets a lot of shade, set back from the road and hidden by trees. Secluded. 

“It might be more secure than the training fields,” Sasuke says. 

“As long as we can be sure no one does come out here,” Shikako acknowledges. “Maybe if we keep an eye on it for a few days first.” There’s no immediate rush to move, so they have time. And who knows, maybe they’ll find housing-relevant-information with the records they’re about to investigate. 

* * *

Looking through the records is a dull business, regardless of how important it is. They use LED seals to provide light to read by, but have to be careful so that the light doesn’t shine out the windows and alert people to their presence. 

“Well,” Shikako says, flicking through a stack and passing them off for Sasuke to stare at with his sharingan as quickly as possible. “The good news is they only really start getting the paperwork in order about ten years ago. Go back fifteen and it’s _terrible_.” 

She’s only skimming the papers. As much as she’d like to take her time and actually read some of these, they can only be in the records room for so long without there being problems. The sooner that their forgeries are in place, the better — and besides, Sasuke has his Sharingan out, flicking over every page he reads. Once they’re done here she can have Sasuke make up copies of what she _does_ want to take her time with. 

“Far enough back for us,” Sasuke says, glancing at a birth certificate that looks like it’s had a cup of tea spilt over it and no one cared. It’s practically illegible. 

“Right?” Shikako says. “It’s perfect. Absolutely horrible and I’m appalled at their standards, but perfect for us.” 

The change makes sense as they connect more dots — that was when the reigns of power shifted from Madara’s father to him. Or, more likely, to whoever he actually delegated to look after things. Most likely Hikaku, from what they’ve seen. 

And it means there are plenty of old, long dead ninja whose signatures they can forge. 

It takes them most of the night, working their way through several different rooms full of records, before they have a solid plan of what to forge and where to put it. 

They steal paper and ink from a stockpile because it’s a closer match to the old records than anything they have on them and Shikako carefully uses the skills Aoba had taught her to make it even more aged and a closer match. 

This wasn’t, she thinks, the situation he would have envisioned when he taught her how to _properly_ forge records, but she imagines he’d be impressed regardless. And then she stops thinking about Aoba abruptly, because she can't afford to do that right now. 

It’s Sasuke that does the real writing though — his Sharingan can copy handwriting perfectly and they’ll need that. There’s no doubt they’ll also be _examined_ under sharingan scrutiny and they need to stand up to it. 

“You said,” Sasuke says, as he furrows his brow and concentrates on perfectly emulating the example forms Shikako has laid out on the desk, “that Madara never left his house.” 

Shikako looks at him warily. “I did,” she says. 

“So if we want to talk to him—” Sasuke goes on as if they _do_ want to talk to him. “—we’ll need an excuse to go to his house. I was thinking we could take a… a thank you gift. That’s a thing people do.” 

“It… is,” Shikako agrees. “It’s not really an excuse that will hold up to Ohabari, I don’t think. She didn’t want us around there.” 

Sasuke brushes that off. “She doesn’t matter,” he says. “It only has to convince him. I know that nothing we can give is going to be equal to what he gave us. But he should see that we made the attempt.” 

Shikako purses her lips. She doesn’t necessarily _agree_ with any of this but…. 

“A gift might be a good idea,” she acknowledges. A _gift_ requires much less sustained talking. A simple drop off — minimum time spent near dangerous loose cannon — while being unlikely to be terribly offensive. It’ll make Sasuke happy and then, hopefully, drop this entire line of thought. 

“I don’t know what we could give, though,” she cautions. “We don’t have a lot of current period resources and anything from home is going to stand out.” 

Sasuke grimaces, inking a careful line and then, just as carefully smudging it with his thumb until it looks terrible and careless. “I know,” he says. “Maybe food. People give that as a gift, don’t they?” 

“If you’re an Akimichi maybe,” Shikako says, quirking a smile. “But yeah. That might work.” She frowns thoughtfully. “We could do a gift basket. Get some wild fruit, whatever we can scavenge that’ll keep, pretty it up with some flowers… it wouldn’t be too complicated and it's unlikely to offend anyone.” 

That's what Shikako wants most out of this: uncomplicated and safe. 

They file the paperwork and then do one more careful sweep of the information at hand for details about the house they're thinking of squatting in, followed by a quick investigation of exactly what kind of resources they should have as orphans. Then the clan starts stirring, chakra signatures ambling in lazy circles across the Uchiha settlement as people get dressed, put futons away, start fires, and prepare breakfast. Dawn is brushing a pale hand across the horizon when she and Sasuke retreat to the house they'd picked out earlier. 

Breakfast is ration bars and water while they inspect the house with exactly as much detail as they'd give to any potential campsite. Then they set up a few clumsy traps with the equipment Madara gave them and stash their new armor in the driest spot they can find. It's not the best staging possible, sure, but they really don't know _what_ a pair of pre-village Uchiha orphans would be able to scrounge around for. Shikako has extra blankets and cooking gear and all kinds of things in hammerspace, but it's all wrong for the time period. 

In a pre-industrialized setting, it's almost impossible for almost everything they own to not stick out like a sore thumb. 

"So," Sasuke says. "A gift basket." He has a little frown of concentration between his eyebrows. 

“Stuff we can find is probably going to be more believable. I can add some others if necessary, but… well. It’s probably a good idea for us to do some foraging anyway.” 

It will be harder to find food when they get to real winter — and after the unproductive day Shikako had yesterday she really can't say for sure that they'll be gone by then. She can't say _anything_ for certain about their situation, except that since they could keep things fresh regardless of how long they had them there was no loss to stocking up. 

Sasuke's expression twists into a grimace, but he nods and they set off for the stretch of forest opposite to the brewing Senju-Uchiha conflict. They can cover a lot of ground, very quickly, and reach the tops of the canopy where the current ninja don’t appear to travel, so it’s not really surprising that they do find a fair collection of bounty. It’s not a particularly impressive haul — chestnuts, mikan oranges, persimmons and yuzu primarily — but Shikako took kunoichi classes. She can take the nicest looking ones and stack them neatly. Some vines and leaves and flowers and it will be pretty enough. 

They just need something to put this stuff in. 

Shikako has a woven bamboo basket in hammerspace — flat and circular, more of a dish than a basket really. It’s her mom’s, and she was supposed to bring it to a little shop next to Hironobu's bakery be repaired, but Shikako is pretty sure this is an acceptable reason to trash it. Shikako will buy a new handmade basket once they get back to Konoha and no one will ever know the difference. 

“Hmm,” Shikako says, critically. She draws a few more things out of hammerspace and squints at them thoughtfully. “Konpeitō is traditional, right?” she asks, holding a packet of sugar candy up. “Traditional means _old._ ” 

Sasuke shrugs, like he has never considered the history of sugar candy in his life. “I think so,” he says. “You get them at festivals and stuff right?” 

Good enough. The plastic packets will have to go, but she has some origami paper and folds up a small box with a quick twist of chakra. “Good enough,” she murmurs, settling it into the gift basket and empting the sugar stars into it. “There we go. One gift basket, ready to be given.” 

Sasuke takes it from her. “Right,” he says, with the same tone of voice as he would use to set out a mission. “Let’s go.” 

Shikako still hesitates. “If — if things go bad… if _anything happens_ …” She holds out one hand towards him, two fingers up in a rat seal. 

Sasuke reaches out and completes the seal with her, just like they had when facing down Isobu in Hidden Mist. Shikako’s chakra shivers through him, and she can’t hold them _both_ intangible and invincible forever — won’t be able to keep him safe the instant he lets go — but he knows what to do if they need it. 

“If anything happens,” Sasuke agrees, squeezing her hand slightly before dropping it. That’s more reassuring than saying _nothing_ will happen and they both know it. 

If ‘nothing’ happened, they wouldn’t be here in the past. 

* * *

They traverse the distance to the stately, lonely Uchiha house unnoticed. Sasuke is the one to knock on the door because Shikako is too focused on keeping her shoulders from tensing. 

Inside, Madara stirs and doesn’t move for a long, long time. His chakra is in the same main living room he’d taken them to yesterday, not off further into the house where there are presumably bedrooms. He’s not asleep, just ignoring them. 

Sasuke knocks again. 

Madara rouses and opens the door. There’s a miasma of chakra around him, rough and unfocused _grief-loneliness-anger_ , alongside the more physical miasma of stale sweat — and he’s still wearing his combat armour. 

_Sasuke, this was the_ worst _idea._

“Uh, hi,” Sasuke says, with what Shikako hopes is a deep desire to re-examine his life choices. “This is a gift for you.” He holds out the gift basket that they’ve very nicely put together. 

The decorative foliage is admittedly a little lacking, but at least Shikako has stacked it so securely that Sasuke can thrust it forward at Madara without the fruit so much as wobbling. 

Madara doesn’t take it. “What.” 

_Good grief._ Shikako weighs how much she doesn’t want to take part in this with how much longer and more painful it’ll be if she leaves Sasuke to stumble through it on his own. It’s _really_ no contest. 

“We wanted to say thank you,” she says, with her best bright customer service voice. “So we brought you a fruit basket as a token of our appreciation. Please take it.” 

“That’s… not necessary,” Madara says, gaze drifting back and forth over them. 

“Yes, it is,” Sasuke says firmly. This is the hill he wants to die on, apparently. He takes a short half step closer, as if to put the basket directly in Madara’s hands. 

Madara moves a half step back, out of the doorway, and hovers uncertainly in the middle of the genkan. “You… should come in?” he says. 

Shikako opens her mouth to politely decline _in all ways_ , but Sasuke nods and says, “Yes.” 

He steps into the house and Shikako glares fruitlessly at his back in betrayal. The gift basket was supposed to _prevent this_. 

Madara doesn’t seem to know what to _do_ with guests, so after Sasuke and Shikako have taken their shoes off and followed him into the living room again they all just stand around awkwardly until he mutters something about getting drinks and retreats to, presumably, a kitchen. 

Shikako glances at the low table that’s about where she felt Madara sitting. The spot, the _room_ really, is _soaked_ in miserable chakra — weeks of it, probably, for the entirety of the three weeks Izuna has been dead — and it kind of makes her want to be sick. It feels nothing like the slow balance of the Fire Temple or even the brief bright spots in Konoha where ninja have pressed chakra into the earth with emotion and determination. 

She’s _not_ sitting there. Politeness or no politeness, potentially murderous host or no potentially murderous host. 

She moves the table. The sliding doors are all closed, but she drags one open with some effort and finds a koi pond, behind which is another garden — in the same unkempt state as the one in front of the house. There’s a kunai sticking out of one of the posts at the edge of the engawa, and she tracks it back to a kunai launcher no longer concealed in the untended garden. There’s a branch laying nearby — it probably landed on the tripwire. 

Madara hasn't been resetting his traps. 

The air outside is early winter crisp, but it’s clean and fresh and _anything_ is better than letting things stay the same. 

Sasuke drops the fruit basket onto the table, giving her a quizzical look — okay, yeah, rearranging someone's house isn’t exactly the finest guest behaviour, but it _does_ give them a direct exit if they need one. 

Madara comes back with a tray with a water pitcher and glasses, seeming bemused by the impromptu Feng Shui. 

“The hot water... isn’t on,” he says vaguely. “Unless you want to wait…” 

“Cold water is fine,” Shikako says hastily, before Sasuke has time to drop them any further into trouble. She doesn’t intend to drink it anyway — who knows if they actually treat the water in this time period or if it's going to be full of bugs. A simple E-rank jutsu that all academy students know is more than enough to deal with that, but like hell she’s going to use jutsu near an on-edge S-rank. 

The silence… continues to be awkward. Sasuke throws her a pleading glance but _she_ wasn’t the one that agreed to come inside. He can handle his own small talk. 

“Ohabari said… the armor you gave us belonged to Izuna,” Sasuke says and she takes it back. Why would he go straight for _that?_ “So, it’s… thank you.” 

Sasuke is the worst at conversations. Ever. 

Madara stares at his glass of water and then drains half of it in one go. “You spoke to Ohabari?” he says, either only hearing or only wanting to address part of that statement. “Good. She’ll make sure you have… enough. Good.” 

Sasuke shifts beside her, and Shikako glances at him. He’s scowling as he starts to say, “She wanted us to—” 

“—meet with her,” Shikako interrupts. She’s not sure if Sasuke had intended to tell Madara about Ohabari’s demand that they leave Izuna’s belongings with her, but no matter what the woman’s reason for doing that had been… she didn’t deserve to have a potentially unstable Uchiha Madara aimed at her. “To arrange for more supplies.” 

Madara nods, and his gaze wanders out to the koi pond. “Good,” he says again, like figuring out anything else to say was more work than he could bear. 

_Yikes_. 

If anything, the apathy is more unnerving than the simmering killing intent from last night. Shikako meets Sasuke’s gaze, then signs _mission objective complete, exfiltrate_. 

His eyes narrow, but he throws a glance at Madara before nodding. He nudges the basket closer to Madara — a move that brings his attention to them again, Sasuke, _why_ — and says, “Thank you again.” 

Madara nods vaguely before he looks back out at the koi pond, and it’s enough of a dismissal that Shikako doesn’t feel any shame in tugging Sasuke into leaving with her. 

Once they’re outside, Shikako takes a deep breath of air untainted by Madara’s palpable grief before jumping into the trees to avoid catching the notice of any nosy or concerned Uchiha. 

Sasuke follows her back to the training ground they’d camped in before he asks, “Why did you interrupt me? He deserves to know what Ohabari was trying to do.” 

“I didn’t know how he would respond to learning about it,” she replies bluntly. “It wasn’t great, but you don't know what he'd do if we told him.” 

“He wouldn’t do anything,” Sasuke says, entirely too confidently. 

“You don’t know that,” Shikako insists. “There’s clearly some kind of complicated relationship here. We don’t know _anything_ about these people, Sasuke. She was afraid of him.” 

"You're afraid of him, too. But he hasn't done anything yet." 

"You _don't know that_ ," Shikako repeats. 

Sasuke stares at her for a long moment. “I don’t… remember much,” he says after a moment, “but while Madara turned against the village, against Hashirama… no one ever talked about him turning against the _clan_.” 

She grimaces. He’s wrong — but she can’t say anything about Madara’s involvement in the massacre. “Either way,” Shikako says instead, “we probably don’t want to get _that_ involved, do we? Who knows, he might have dragged us back to see her again and talk it out.” 

Sasuke makes a face. “Ugh.” 

If she can’t convince him by means of truth, then playing on his desire to avoid conversation and apparent dislike of Ohabari is the next best thing. Because who knows, maybe _fire and death_ isn’t the most likely outcome at this stage — but that doesn’t mean the others are going to be _good_ either. 

But somehow, alarmingly, she doesn’t think this will be the end of it. When he’s determined about something, Sasuke is an unstoppable force. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can still find me and Pepper on the [Heliocentric discord](https://discord.gg/rCtwMQG), where you can talk about all kinds of DoS things!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Please Leave the Matchmaking to the Experts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19061332) by [Pepperdoken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pepperdoken/pseuds/Pepperdoken)




End file.
